Summer of Love, a Time Travel Page 11

  Chi pops off nutribeads from his nutritional necklace and swallows them. Two thousand calories will nourish him. Still, his mouth waters at the scent of grilling onions.

  And there! Another film crew barrels down Cole Street on the back of a flatbed truck. The truck speeds around the corner before Chi can catch up. Damn it, anyway.

  Thrills. It’s a thrill a minute in the Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love.

  And dangerous. So many dangers: the Man or the Man. Rustlers, hustlers, bikers, hoodies. The Axis is a fourteen-year-old girl, all alone. It’s Chi’s duty not just to find her, but to protect her.

  And there! A slim girl in jeans and a high-collared shirt, her long fair hair flying, sprints across Haight Street and disappears down Belvedere.

  And there! As if a shadow has lifted up from the concrete and become a solid thing, a dark figure stalks after her.

  A demon? Is it a demon?

  Chi pushes through the crowd, shoving strangers aside without a prophylak over his hand.

  “Hey!” people protest.

  Where is she? Where did she go?

  “Hey, you. Snot-nose.” A beat cop brandishing his billy club, all grizzled jowls and quivering indignation, seizes Chi by the elbow. “Get yer ass outta the street, snot-nose, or I’ll bust ya for jaywalkin’.”

  Chi points up Belvedere, protesting, “But I just saw my cousin!”

  “An’ I just saw the Virgin Mary.” The cop slaps the tip of his billy club in his beefy palm. “Swear to begeeze, I’d dig bustin’ ya.”

  Whatever you do, son, don’t get busted by the Man.

  “Okay, okay!” Chi leaps on the sidewalk, but the cop comes after him. Chi ducks into the stream of people walking in the opposite direction, hunkers down on bended knees. He’s a six-foot-four guy with long red hair, but he manages to fade into the crowd.

  Will he ever find the girl he’s searching for? Find her in time? His easy defeat by a hoodie, then a beat cop disgusts him.

  For aside from all the dangers lurking in the Haight-Ashbury of 1967, demons threaten the Summer of Love. That’s what his skipfather believes. Demons: what Chi’s people call Devolved Entities Manifested from the Other Now.

  Demons that seek the girl who is the Axis.

  Demons that want the Axis dead.

  6

  Purple Haze

  Susan sits on the stoop of the Double Barrel house, staring at ants scurrying up and down the stairs. The neverending party rocks on as she studies them, precise little creatures fulfilling their purpose in life. They swarm all over the kitchen. No one puts out ant poison or worries much about them. Why kill an ant?

  Around the corner, the Haight-Ashbury scurries.

  “They’re just like those ants, all these damn people,” the woman says. The tall, exotic woman who cut her down in Golden Gate Park. Only this time the woman wears scarlet velvet, and Susan knows a thing or two. To Susan’s surprise, Ruby A. Maverick sits next to her on the stoop.

  “The ants have more nobility and purpose,” Susan mumbles, attempting a reply, Professor Zoom-style. How much more misery can she take in one day? Ruby humiliated her once. What’s she here for? To do it again? She can feel Ruby’s eyes burning holes through her shame.

  “The ants have more nobility and purpose,” Ruby echoes. “That’s not bad for a teenybopper.” Her voice rings with that haughty tone. “Find your little girlfriend?”

  Susan shakes her head. “No, I haven’t found Penny Lane.”

  “What did you say your name was?”

  “I’m Starbright. And you’re Ruby Maverick. How come I can remember your name, but you can’t remember mine?”

  Ruby snorts. “Get off your high horse, kid. I meet a lot of people in my shop. Got a real name?”

  High horse, oh really. “That is my real name. No one’s turning me in to the Man, so you can forget it. I’m not telling anyone anything, including you.”

  “Uh-huh.” Ruby shakes her head. “Listen, Starbright. I acted like a pig last time we spoke. I admit it, right, all right? So… .I’m sorry.”

  Susan shrugs.

  “You accepting my apology?”

  “Why should I?” Susan looks up at her. Ruby isn’t smiling. She looks as intimidating as ever, a bold, proud woman with a cloud of black hair out to there. But those fiery eyes, staring out at the street, then back at Susan, then out again, are unmistakably friendly. The eyes twinkle, beaming at her.

  Suddenly Susan isn’t so intimidated.

  “You have to understand,” Ruby says, “this is my turf. I’ve lived here for years. This hippie thing, all you kids. The journalists and the film crews. The cops and the crazies. All the dope, all the dealing. It’s turned into one big drag. Oh, hell.” She throws up her hands. “I can’t explain it.”

  “No, you explained it just fine,” Susan says. “I understand. At least, I’m trying to. The Summer of Love is the most amazing thing that ever happened to me.” Which is true. Or true enough.

  “Uh-huh,” Ruby says, but her tone isn’t sarcastic.

  They sit in silence, watching the boisterous crowd and the busy ants.

  “How’s Stan?” Ruby finally says.

  “He just did this big acid deal at the Festival of Growing Things.” The story sort of tumbles out of Susan’s mouth, but she’s too embarrassed to tell Ruby about the hundred-dollar bill Stan took from her. Or what he demanded she do. “Ten thousand hits. His profit is a year’s worth of income. He used your calculating machine to figure it out, but I figured it out in my head. Stan can’t figure anything out after he smokes white Lebanese pollen.”

  “Sweet Isis.” Ruby gives her an inscrutable look. “He inside?”

  “He… .he’s upstairs with some chick he picked up at the festival.” Susan stares at the ants until her eyes tear.

  Ruby sighs. “Stan’s not like he used to be either, kid. We’ve all changed.”

  “The chick is really beautiful,” Susan adds. As if that explains everything.

  “Chick?” Professor Zoom strolls out and sits on the stoop. He dropped a hit of dragon’s blood on top of the white lightning he dropped this morning. He practically glows in the oncoming twilight. “This isn’t a farm. Where’s a chick?”

  “Shut up, Harold,” Ruby says. “Starbright and me, we’re rapping.”

  “Chiiiick, chick-chick-chick,” Professor Zoom says in a falsetto. He chuckles in his deadpan way. “He-ere chickie-chickie-chickie.” He presses his thumbs together and flaps his fingers like wings in Susan’s face.

  She recoils. “Chick. Like a stupid little bird.”

  “Like prey,” Ruby says, nodding. “Wolves go after them.”

  Professor Zoom starts to chant, “Chick, bird, broad, bimbo, gash, pussy.” He laughs, getting into it. “Witch-bitch. Chick-chick-chick.”

  “God!” Susan stares at Ruby, openmouthed.

  Ruby stares back. Their eyes connect.

  “Dig it,” Ruby says. “Once ‘chick’ was Beat talk. But I guess ‘chick’ isn’t very hip anymore. Let’s you and me not use that word.”

  “Okay,” Susan says. And it’s another revelation, a Summer of Love revelation. “What shall I call you?”

  “Call me Ruby,” she says and formally shakes Susan’s hand. “Come on, Starbright. We’ve got work to do.”

  They stand and stride into the house. Someone has plugged in an amp and picks out screeching notes on a guitar. Fawn is still stripping on the coffee table. She’s taking her time, down to her panties and cowboy boots as the guys hoot.

  “Know where Stan keeps my calculating machine?” Ruby shouts in Susan’s ear.

  “I sure do. In his room, on the desk by the door.”

  “Think you can help me go get it?”

  “Sure. My overnight bag with all my stuff is up there, too. I think I want to go get that.”

  “I think you should.”

  “But, Ruby, they’re up there.”

  “Don’t worry. You help me, I’ll help you.
”

  They steal up the stairs to the third floor. Susan cannot believe her nerve, but Ruby closes her hand around the doorknob and silently opens the door. Marilyn from Mill Valley moans in loud, long sobs. Ruby puts her fingers to her lips, Ssh! She hands her shoulder bag to Susan and creeps inside. Susan holds the door ajar, turning her eyes away. Ruby creeps out, cradling the calculating machine in her arms. She sets it down on the floor with a thump and creeps in again.

  “Aaah! Aaah! Aaah!” Marilyn screams.

  Ruby hurries out with Susan’s overnight bag, and Susan eases the door shut.

  “Who’s there?” Stan calls out in a slurred voice.

  They steal down the stairs and out of the house. Made it, they made it! Aaah! Aaah! Aaah! they mock. Susan slaps hands with Ruby, flushed and laughing.

  “Damn, this thing must weigh thirty pounds.” Ruby grunts, resting the calculating machine on the stoop.

  “What monster dost thou cradle in thy arms, oh witch?” says Professor Zoom, his irises almost black from his dilated pupils.

  “Go back to Harvard, Harold,” Ruby says.

  “Don’t call me names,” he says.

  But Susan can’t help it. Her laughter vanishes. Tears well in her eyes before she can stop them.

  “Hey, flower child,” Ruby says. “He’s not worth it.”

  “That’s easy for you to say.”

  “Kid, you don’t know. Stan and me, we once had a life. At least, I thought we did.”

  “Oh, Ruby, I don’t know what I’m going to do!”

  “Find somebody better. We all do. You will, too.”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  Susan’s cheeks burn. She clutches her purse and overnight bag. Teddy bear comforts. But there is no more comfort in childish things.

  Stan dashes out the door in barely zipped-up jeans, towing Marilyn, dazed and naked, on his arm. “Say hey! I’m not through with that!”

  “Yeah, you are through with that,” Ruby says. “Let’s go, Starbright,” she says to Susan. “You come along with me.”

  *

  Ruby hoists the calculating machine in both arms and hikes as fast as she can down the quiet way on Page Street. The machine is heavy, but not nearly as heavy as the sharp repentance in her heart. Regret is the worst because there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t change the past.

  The kid trails three steps behind, dragging her feet and her overnight bag, her eyes glued to the ground. Ruby can’t catch the kid’s glance, let alone flash the sympathetic smile waiting on her lips.

  Chick-chick-chick. She should’ve belted Harold in the chops. Those stoned Harvard dropout dudes, they’re the worst.

  Up the block, Haight Street is crammed with the Saturday night crowd. Stragglers returning from the Festival of Growing Things. Folks heading to the Fillmore where Eric Burdon and the Animals, Chuck Berry, and the Steve Miller Blues Band are playing. Hustlers and hunters, bikers and dealers, tourists and college kids, heads and hangers-on grooving for free on the street scene, which can be as entertaining as a paid-for engagement.

  Regret. Ruby recalls Golden Gate Park only too well, how she lashed out at the kid. A lamb thrown to the wolf with the most bodacious appetite in the neighborhood for Little Miss Red Riding Hoods.

  Ruby could have been cool, if her head had been on straight. She could have guided the kid to the Print Mint or Huckleberry House. Hell, Ruby could have put her up on the couch. She took in Chi, and he’s worked out fine. Now the couch is taken. So where else? She’s got lots of space in her house. What about in her heart?

  Sometimes flower children fresh off the bus have a friend and a friendly place to stay. Sometimes they don’t. Now look at the trouble she’s in. Who knows what dope Professor Zoom turned her on to. She’s lucky to be as coherent as she seems. She might have the clap and not know it. These kids from the burbs are unbelievably naïve. And Stan. The man has gone too far this time. Getting a kid pregnant. That’s statutory rape. Does he know?

  Pregnant. Ruby doesn’t doubt it. She got pregnant once, not a whole lot older than the kid, no less miserable, and under circumstances equally unsavory. “Never again,” she mutters to the evening sky. “Never ever again.”

  She sighs and grips the calculating machine tighter. Just goes to show you. She wouldn’t have acted so stupid if she didn’t still feel so lousy about Stan. She feels ill, a knot of sickness heavy in her gut.

  Because there was a time when he wasn’t like this. And that time, their loving time together, is all mixed up with her longing for the way things were before the crazy Summer of Love.

  For the time when Ruby was happy.

  *

  She’d been juicing it up at Vesuvio’s in North Beach. Jazz was blowing, and the ’60 edition of Beatitude had just hit the bookstores. She and Bob Kaufman were whooping it up in the John Wilkes Booth on the mezzanine. Her poem “Hot Bitch” had got published in the collection, and there were rumors the Heat was going to bust City Lights for peddling pornography. After studying Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay at Mills College, Ruby felt positively wicked. She was still dumb enough to be proud of a line like, “Her nipples burn, hot bitch.” And so on. Bob had been kind.

  In strolled this fine young dude, tall and rangy as a racehorse, in boots and jeans and a leather jacket. He wore his hair cropped, his face clean-shaven. Vain about the chin and the cheekbones, well, why not? He went by the name of Harry Orr, which made a sophomoric joke or a lousy come-on. Harry… .or? He toasted her literary success—and disappeared.

  He was working the bicoastal thing, which should have been a tip-off he’d turn out no good. Working the underground: dope and stolen cars, broken paroles and broken hearts. Still, when he showed up on the Beach a year later, he hadn’t lost his illusion of purity.

  Ruby was turning thirty, an intense age filled with fate and magic. She could have had anyone she wanted. When the Beats lusted after spades, they dug the Haitian in her. When the hipsters lusted after Native Americans, they dug the Cherokee in her. When the suits lusted after Southern cream, they dug the belle in her. She was one fine babe, and she knew it.

  He was now known as Stan the Man, possibly on the lam. Their paths crossed again at Vesuvio’s. This time he went home with her to her view apartment on Vallejo Street.

  When Ruby split to the Haight-Ashbury in ’62, Stan went with her. Ma had died of lung cancer, though she’d never smoked, and Ruby made a stink about working conditions at Marinship with the wartime shipyard’s successor, a rich construction company. The construction company settled for fifteen grand. Ruby sprang Ma’s savings and pension out of probate and opened the Mystic Eye with ten thousand in cash.

  Get your own, Daughter, Ma always said. Ruby did. The shop was her dream after a lifetime fascination with herbs and the ancient ways.

  Stan grew his hair long—sweet Isis, he was beautiful—and helped her set up 555 Clayton Street. He built the shelves and display cases by hand. Ruby hoped he’d pursue his carpentry and woodworking talents. He moved in with her upstairs and stayed true for nearly four years.

  It was no secret how women panted after him, even the squares in their spit curls and girdles. He and Ruby joked about it: Harry or Stan?

  But could they last?

  In those days? The Pill and rock ‘n’ roll and bikinis and James Bond movies unleashed an avalanche of pent-up female lust. Cigarette ads urged women to let loose. Booze ads showcased gorgeous dames lapping bright drinks from tall glasses. Tampon ads insisted nothing should hold a woman back from doing whatever she wanted to do. Even the ads for Dial soap with AT-7 showed a girl in the shower, her pursed lips ready for fellatio, soapsuds ejaculated all over her face.

  There was no stopping the media assault of freewheeling sexuality in those days.

  Grandmother Says: Kaou (Temptation)

  The Image: A hot wind arises under heaven, disrupting the world and its rulers.

  The Oracle: The maiden is bold. The man delights in he
r and does not recognize her power. He is seduced, then finds he cannot control her.

  Hexagram 44, The I Ching or Book of Changes

  to fuck with love

  to fuck with all the heat and wild of fuck

  the fever of your mouth devouring my secrets and my alibis

  leaving me pure burned into oblivion

  nipple to nipple we touched

  and were transfixed

  by a flow of energy

  beyond anything I have ever known

  we TOUCHED!

  the energy indescribable

  almost unendurable

  the barrier of noumenon-phenomenon transcended

  the circle momentarily complete

  the balance of forces perfect

  I kiss your shoulder and it reeks of lust

  the lust of erotic angels fucking the stars

  and shouting their insatiable joy over heaven

  the lust of comets colliding in celestial hysteria

  SCREAMING DELIGHT over the universe

  we lie together, our bodies wet and burning

  and we WEEP we WEEP we WEEP the incredible tears

  that saints and holy men shed in the presence

  of their incandescent gods

  we are transmuting

  we are as soft and warm and trembling

  as a new gold butterfly

  at night sometimes I see our bodies glow

  “To Fuck with Love” by Lenore Kandel

  Underground Press, 1964

  Who married? Why marry? No one married anymore. Who was faithful? Why stay faithful? What did faithful mean, anyway? Nothing. Or at least, not very much.

  Ruby should have known he could not possibly have stayed true. Or legit. Instead of the occasional pot score, Stan turned into a cottage industry. Late-night calls came weekly, daily. He spent more and more time on the street. He traveled to Mexico three times. One night Ruby was confronted outside her shop by a stringy woman who demanded to see Stan. Her paranoia shot through the roof. She owned a legitimate business. She was working on a pretty cool life.